4,370 Quotes About Literature

I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane.

Life is a book. We write in everyday existence.

It’s easy to write a sentence, paragraph, or book. What’s difficult is writing the best sentence, paragraph, or book, you can write.

Whenever I encounter writer’s block, I stop writing … with my hands; and I then start writing with my legs.

Ancient literature is a rich history.

The times of literature defy time because, for it, time is a minor invention.

Cały kłopot z fikcją literacką polega na tym - rzekł John Rivers - że za dużo w niej sensu. W rzeczywistości nigdy nie ma sensu

We are smart people sitting in a room talking about beautiful things, ugly and difficult things.

Science may explain how humans came into being, but it has no answer to the slippery question of how humans should live. Only literature makes it possible to pose such questions in the first place. And if there is no answer, only literature can point to the impossibility of ever finding one.